noOstalgia is a strange thing, it can appear out of nowhere like a TIE fighter and hit you in the gut, leaving you confused and in pain. An hour into Star Wars Outlaws, I never expected to be emotionally overwhelmed by a simple quest to buy spare parts from a group of Jawas. But then I got in my speeder and rode out into the Dune Sea, and I saw their vehicles, black and huge, in the low sun. And I saw those little guys running around repairing droids. And I was transported back to when I was 12 years old, watching Star Wars on VHS in the living room, eating Monster Munchies my mom bought me, repeating lines with Luke. Ubisoft’s epic adventure is full of moments like this, and they saved my life many times.

All Pre-release talk You hear a lot about this not being a typical Ubisoft open world game, but Star Wars Outlaws is a lot like a typical Ubisoft open world game. You play as Kay Vess, a city thief who has been living quietly off her cunning until a lucrative heist goes wrong and she steals a spaceship and crashes it on the remote moon of Tshara. From here, she must survive while working for and at odds with the many criminal organizations in the galaxy, building a reputation as a skilled mercenary and thief. From here, it’s a familiar storyline. You’re soon given the main story quest, dozens of optional minor tasks, and the opportunity to take on various smuggler and rogue side jobs, usually traveling somewhere to get or blow things up. It’s like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, or Watch Dogs. It’s Star Wars: Busy Work Strikes Back.

But there’s also an important difference: here, you’ll be aided by your beloved pet Nix, who you can dispatch to distract guards, fetch useful objects, or crawl through tight spaces to unlock doors. Nix is adorable, and adds emotional depth and danger to Cay’s lonely life. But more importantly, the game expertly weaves Star Wars lore into the mix, with the buildings you invade being beautifully recreated Imperial research facilities, destroyed Republic starships, and vile Hutt fortresses, all filled with intricate visual and narrative details drawn from the original film trilogy. Everywhere you go, fans will find a treat: familiar droids, bits of history, and beloved spaceships. The streets of Mos Eisley are patrolled by Stormtroopers in their monstrous vehicles. Dewback.

The planets you visit aren’t huge explorable territories. Most have big cities and a few square miles of open terrain. But that’s ok. There’s plenty to discover, from Hutt treasure vaults in the valleys of Tatooine to pirate camps in the swampy forests of Akiva. Sadly, the speeder bikes handle badly and are like trying to traverse an alien planet on a beat-up old Honda 125. Equally unwieldy are the space flight sections, which are reminiscent of No Man’s Sky. The planets’ orbits are densely populated with abandoned spaceships, TIEs and pirate fighters that you can loot. You can rescue ships in distress or perform cargo pickup missions, but the flight simulation never quite matches up to the classic LucasArts space combat titles.

Most of the aboveground quests involve a combination of parkour (climbing pipes and cliffs painted yellow, although you can turn off the paint) and stealth, sneaking through steel corridors, passing walls of flashing buttons and beeping computer displays, destroying alarm panels, and silently taking down enemies. It’s basic, and at times it comes closer to Spider-Man’s Mary Jane missions, which can be frustratingly slow compared to Dishonored’s systemic complexity. As you progress, however, you’ll encounter different experts who can unlock new skills that allow you to move more quietly or use cool stealth toys like smoke grenades, making infiltration much more fun. You also have a very configurable laser gun with different modes that can be unlocked. You can temporarily pick up other weapons, but I like that Kay sticks to a Han Solo-style pistol. You can’t beat a good blaster by your side.

At its core, it’s a cheesy story that’s grown from a myth of street kids making it big into something a bit more interesting. As Kay recruits a raiding party that includes the laser-scarred battle droid ND-5, he forges friendships that both elevate and contrast the heist plan. Clashes with the Rebels also call into question the ethics of their war and their methods. There are great moments where it’s clear the designers took inspiration not only from Star Wars itself, but also from directors George Lucas reveres, John Ford and Akira Kurosawa.

Some may be nostalgic for the legends of the Jedi or EA’s Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor titles. Outlaws is definitely for Solo fans, not Skywalker fans, but it does feature some really compelling new characters. It gives most fans of the movies what they want, and they’ll get to geek out with things like the EG-6 power droid and the X-34 landspeeder. Chadra Fan Sitting at the bar in the cantina 😅 I’ve been wandering around for hours looking for this item and have rarely been disappointed.

If this Was Compared to Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry titles, this one falls into the so-so category: reasonably fun, a little frustrating at times, and chock-full of overused tropes of the open-world genre, but the Star Wars license grabs the game by the Corellian trousers time and time again, dragging it into thrilling territory. For the better part of the 40 or so hours I played, I felt like a 12-year-old again, feeling a little confused and giddy, but also blissfully familiar, enjoying every moment.